A Recording Of Britney Spears Singing Without Auto-Tune Has Leaked Online

No one expects Britney Spears to have a good singing voice. That’s not a knock — she and her team are great at creating pop hits, and it’s not as if “Lucky” would be any better if Brit sounded like Mariah Carey. It’s perfect despite her imperfect voice, which you can now hear without the assistance of Auto-Tune, in a video that was recently uploaded of Britney’s unfinished vocal tracks for “Alien.” Needless to say, it’s pretty rough, and the song’s producer, William Orbit, has come to her defense.

Dearest Music Lovers, I have heard that Britney vocal link that everybody’s been discussing. It has been impossible not to as there have been many comments directing my attention to it. [I won’t re-posting it here]. I’d like to affirm that ANY singer when first at the mic at the start of a long session can make a multitude of vocalisations in order to get warmed up.

Warming up is essential if you’re a pro, as it is with a runner doing stretches, and it takes a while to do properly. I’ve heard all manner of sounds emitted during warmups. The point is that it is not supposed to be shared with millions of listeners.

A generous singer will put something down the mic to help the engineer get their systems warmed up and at the right level, maybe whilst having a cup of herb tea and checking through lyrics before the session really kicks off. It’s not expected to be a ‘take’.

I think that 99% of you reading this will totally understand. Whomever put this on the internet must have done so in a spirit of unkindness, but it can in no way detract from the fact that Britney is and always will be beyond Stellar! She is magnificent! And that’s that. (Via)

Again, Britney’s voice doesn’t really matter, not when she’s already made “Toxic,” but if this whole singing thing doesn’t work out for her, she’s got an impressive acting career to fall back on.

UPDATE: Video has been removed. We’ll update with another version if one becomes available.

Britney isn’t the problem here–auto-tune is. Without it, we’d have been spared many of the worst song “stylists” of our era. Except when it’s auto-tuning the news, friends don’t let friends auto-tune–it never ends well.

@packman_jon …she lives in this beautiful high rise penthouse apt, but doesn’t have central air? Baffling!

Though I totally understood her video where she was in pigtails thumping her pencil (as I was) waiting for class to be over so she could get to the gym and dance in spandex. Schools so boring amiright!